© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society for Medical Oncology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
editorials |
Brain metastases and subtypes of breast cancer
Department of Oncology, University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland
(E-mail: bernhard.pestalozzi@usz.ch)
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Breast cancer metastases to the central nervous system (CNS) include the clinically distinct situations of multiple brain metastases (78%), solitary brain metastasis (14%), and leptomeningeal metastases (8%) [1, 2]. CNS metastases occur in 10%–16% of stage IV patients while they are found in 
30% of patients in autopsy series [1]. In populations of early breast cancer patients treated on adjuvant trials, CNS-recurrence rates of 3%–6% have been observed [3, 4]. CNS recurrences have consistently been found to occur with increased frequency in younger and premenopausal patients as well as in estrogen receptor (ER)-negative and/or progesterone receptor (PgR)-negative cancers. While some series found correlations of CNS recurrences with nodal status, high tumor grade, tumor size, and HER2 status [4], other series have described associations with high S phase, aneuploidy, and p53 positivity [3]. There was no correlation between CNS